Overview

Specifies the organizational context and underlying concepts for project, programme and portfolio management, and acts as the entry point to the ISO 21500 series.

ISO 21500:2021 specifies the organizational context and underlying concepts for undertaking project, programme and portfolio management. It provides guidance for organizations that want to adopt or improve these disciplines using the standards prepared by ISO/TC 258, and it is the overarching document for the whole ISO 21500 series.

A significant change from the 2012 edition. ISO 21500:2012 was titled "Guidance on project management" and described project management processes directly. In the 2021 revision the series was restructured: ISO 21500 became the context-and-concepts document for project, programme and portfolio management, while detailed guidance on project management itself moved to ISO 21502:2020. Anyone citing "ISO 21500" for project management practice from before 2021 is generally referring to content now found in ISO 21502.

What it covers. The standard describes the organizational environment in which projects, programmes and portfolios exist — how they relate to strategy and to the delivery of value and benefits, how they differ from one another and from operations, the roles and responsibilities involved, and the governance and organizational enablers (such as competence, methods, tools and sponsorship) needed for them to work. It is deliberately conceptual: it establishes shared meaning so that the more detailed documents in the series can be applied consistently.

The ISO 21500 series. Further guidance is given in ISO 21502 (guidance on project management), ISO 21503 (programme management), ISO 21504 (portfolio management) and ISO 21505 (governance of projects, programmes and portfolios). ISO 10006 addresses quality management in projects from the ISO 9001 side. The series is applicable to most organizations, public and private, and is not dependent on size or type, nor on the complexity, size or duration of the projects concerned.

Certification and relationship to methodologies. ISO 21500 is guidance. It is not certifiable, and it is not a methodology — it does not compete with proprietary bodies of knowledge or methods such as the PMBOK Guide or PRINCE2, which provide detailed practices, templates and their own individual certification schemes. ISO 21500 sits above that layer, describing the concepts an organization needs to have in place whichever methodology it chooses. Individuals are not certified against ISO 21500 by ISO, and organizations cannot be certified to it.

Purpose

To describe the organizational context, concepts and terminology of project, programme and portfolio management, and to provide the overarching guidance for using the ISO 21500 series of standards.

Key Benefits

• Common international vocabulary for projects, programmes and portfolios
• Clarifies how project delivery connects to organizational strategy and value
• Methodology-neutral: works alongside PMBOK Guide, PRINCE2 or in-house methods
• Entry point and orientation for the rest of the ISO 21500 series
• Applicable to organizations of any size, sector or maturity
• Supports design of governance and organizational enablers for delivery

Key Requirements

• Note: this is a guidance standard; the concepts it sets out include:
• The organizational context for projects, programmes and portfolios
• Distinctions between projects, programmes, portfolios and operations
• Alignment of delivery with organizational strategy, value and benefits
• Governance arrangements and decision-making structures
• Roles, responsibilities and competences involved in delivery
• Organizational enablers such as methods, tools and sponsorship
• How the documents of the ISO 21500 series relate to one another

Who Needs This Standard?

PMO leaders and heads of delivery, executives and sponsors responsible for portfolios, organizations standardizing project terminology across geographies, public sector bodies requiring a vendor-neutral reference, and anyone selecting or designing a project management framework.

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